Free Republic

For two centuries, the melting pot was America's defining symbol and crowning achievement. It allowed millions of integrating immigrants to formulate and maintain this nation's social contract. But new concepts of separateness, new feelings about diversity, and new definitions of ethnicity have all but destroyed the melting pot and the social contract. To be politically correct today, how should one categorize the following naturalized or native-born Americans, all of whom I know or have known? A Kenyan-born white woman whose parents were born in South Africa and whose grandparents were born in the Netherlands. A black man who was born...

On a July afternoon in 2006, Patrick Hale microwaved a bag of popcorn for his two young children and sat down with them to watch television. When he got up to change the channel, he heard a strange noise behind him, and turned to see his 23-month-old daughter, Allison, turning purple and unable to breathe.

Consumers know less about the water they pay dearly for in bottles than what they can drink almost for free from the tap because the two are regulated differently, congressional investigators and nonprofit researchers say in new reports. Both the Government Accountability Office and the Environmental Working Group, a nonprofit research and advocacy organization, recommend in reports released Wednesday that bottled water be labeled with the same level of information municipal water providers must disclose.

OLYMPIA, Wash. -- A man who fled Vietnam more than 30 years ago has won a defamation lawsuit in Olympia against five fellow Vietnamese who called him a communist sympathizer in local publications. The jury awarded the 65-year-old man, Duc Tan, $225,000 on Thursday after a three-week trial. The Olympian reports that the lawyer for the defendants, Nigel Malden of Tacoma, argued the case is a blow against free speech. The jury also awarded $85,000 to Tan's organization, the Vietnamese Community of Thurston County. One expert witness testified that labeling people communist discredits them among Vietnamese who were imprisoned or...

My colleague Brent Baker has painstakingly documented how the big three broadcast networks have gone out of their way to avoid labeling scandal-scarred New York Governor Eliot Spitzer as a “Democrat.” An examination of the fifteen ABC, CBS and NBC morning and evening news shows through Wednesday night finds Spitzer was called a Democrat just 20% of the time — twice on CBS, once on ABC, and never on NBC. So how do the networks treat Republicans involved in sex scandals? Always, always as Republicans, and as problems for their party. Last July, Louisiana Senator David Vitter’s name surfaced in...

The consultancy conducted an online survey amongst 1,000 consumers aged 16 years and over. Eighty-four percent of respondents said they now look at recycling details. For 84 per cent this is just as important as fat content. For 80 per cent it is more important than salt info, for 79 per cent more important than sugar info, and for 70 per cent more important than calorie content. The findings are pertinent at the present time as the nutrient content of food is a hot topic across Europe, since the European Commission published its proposal for new labelling legislation at the...

AP Business Writer Tyson Foods Inc. plans to revise labels that say its fresh chicken is "raised without antibiotics" after the U.S. Department of Agriculture said it made a mistake in approving labels that use that term. The world's largest meat processor said it has been in discussions with the USDA since at least September about the label it introduced this summer in a major marketing campaign for its fresh chicken. According to a Nov. 6 letter from the USDA, the agency told Tyson it had mistakenly overlooked a feed additive, called ionophores, used for Tyson's chicken when it approved...

SANTA ROSA, Calif. - Vintners have been using byproducts from milk, eggs, wheat and even fish guts in the winemaking processes for centuries. But a new federal proposal could require American wineries to disclose such unsavory items _ used as "fining" agents to remove grit _ as ingredients. The proposal, which could be passed by the end of the year, would require companies to redesign the labels on every bottle to protect people who are allergic to certain foods. Executives at Sonoma and Napa county wineries and their trade groups say few, if any, wine drinkers suffer allergic reactions from...

WASHINGTON (AP) - Meat and milk from cloned animals may not appear in supermarkets for years despite being deemed by the government as safe to eat. But don't be surprised if "clone-free" labels appear sooner. Ben & Jerry's, for one, wants consumers to know that its ice cream comes from regular cows and not clones. The Ben & Jerry's label already says its farmers don't use bovine growth hormone. "We want to make sure people are confident with what's in our pints," company spokesman Rob Michalak said. "We haven't yet landed on exactly how we want to express that publicly."...

NEW YORK (AP) -- Yankees owner George Steinbrenner said he was "deeply disappointed" at his team's elimination in the first round of the AL playoffs, calling it a "sad failure." New York was heavily favored in its series against the Detroit Tigers and won Tuesday's opener 8-4. The Tigers then won 4-3 at Yankee Stadium on Thursday, and swept two games in Detroit, 6-0 Friday and 8-3 Saturday. "I am deeply disappointed at our being eliminated so early in the playoffs," Steinbrenner said in a statement issued Sunday by spokesman Howard Rubenstein. "This result is absolutely not acceptable to me...

WASHINGTON - Oh, the irony. A nation full of overweight people is also full of label readers. Nearly 80 percent of Americans insist they check the labels on food at the grocery store. They scan the little charts like careful dieters, looking for no-nos such as fat and calories and sugars. Yet even when the label practically screams, "Don't do it!" people drop the package into the cart anyway. At least that is what 44 percent of people admitted in a recent AP-Ipsos poll. So attentive, yet so overweight. Two-thirds of people in the United States weigh too much. Why,...

Given the sad state of affairs in today's affairs of state — record federal budget deficits, record trade deficits, illegal domestic eavesdropping, the sale of key U.S. ports — one would think the U.S. House of Representatives has more important problems to address than a proposal to virtually wipe out state food labeling laws. Well, no actually; the biggest fish fried by the House March 8 was just that: the National Uniformity for Food Act of 2005. The uniformity act is a fat, old carp multinational food firms have been selling Congress for years. The goal is to override nearly...

Beyond Bar Codes: Tuning up plastic radio labels Peter Weiss Electronic labels made from plastic semiconductors can now pick up and respond to radio signals at a frequency suitable for use on products. At an electronics conference in San Francisco this week, two European industrial-research teams described plastic radiofrequency-identification (RFID) prototypes with those advanced capabilities. Although silicon-based RFID tags are already in wide use—for instance, in so-called smart cards used to pay mass-transit fares—the new developments bring closer the prospect of RFID tags becoming as common as bar codes, or perhaps even more so, the researchers say. Besides labeling consumer...

DETROIT - A warning that consumers shouldn't use a heat gun that produces temperatures of 1,000 degrees as a hairdryer has won an anti-lawsuit group's award for the wackiest label of the year. The Wacky Warning Label Contest, in its ninth year, is conducted by Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch as part of an effort to show the effects of lawsuits on warning labels. "When judges see it as their job to dismiss cases that are rooted in frivolous theories, we'll see fewer wacky labels and more fairness in the courts," said Robert B. Dorigo Jones, the group's president. The $500...

Newhouse News Service Multiple-choice question: Why are more American kids allergic to foods, particularly peanuts? A) Their immune systems are confused by increasingly clean homes. B) Nervous parents wait too long to feed their children peanuts. C) We roast peanuts rather than boil them. D) Maybe one of the above, and/or something else. Unfortunately, the answer is "D." One study estimates American children's rate of allergy to peanuts and tree nuts (like walnuts and pecans) — about 1 percent of those under age 18 — has doubled in recent years. No one can say why. But whatever biological mysteries are...

On countless food packages, serving sizes have become a confusing joke. I bought a frozen "personal pizza." That's what it said on the package, in big letters. From the name (and its size-it's not very big), you would think a "personal pizza" is for one person -- say, you. But according to the small print, it can feed both you and some other person: The serving size listed on the label is half a pie. We took the "personal pizza" downtown to Little Italy in New York City for some expert opinions. "I don't think you could share this with...

According to Senate minority leader Harry Reid and his friends, Democrats must block the constitutional appointment process in order to protect you from right-wing radical judges. They say they use the filibuster only in the most extreme situations, to block confirmation of extremely dangerous radicals to the bench for sake of all mankind. Heroes they are really, at least in their own minds. In order to understand what Mr. Reid and his friends mean by this assertion, we must first understand what they mean by “right-wing radical.” Let’s begin with the simple stuff. If you believe Teddy Kennedy is a...

It seems that an awful lot of time is spent trying to define what a persons beliefs represent, and how they might impact others. Branding people Liberals or conservatives, or whatever the hot label is this week, does no good. I would challenge anyone to test a person's beliefs with a simple questionaire, asking the basic questions that are supposed to define a person politically. I won't make a large list here, but abortion, gay rights, civil rights, enviornment, ad nauseum, you get the idea. What I find is that there is so much crossover here, that is really becomes...

In my previous article I asked if anyone could explain to me what a political moderate is, and within days of its publication I was swamped with answers to my query. In fact, more people have contacted me about this subject than practically all the others I've written about combined, and the surprisingly strong reaction to it has prompted me to follow-up my initial article with this one. The topic, which I first perceived to be of only marginal interest to the general public, has proved to be a very divisive and controversial one indeed, and so I've decided to...

Can someone please explain to me what a moderate is, in political terms? Most Americans are able to agree on the general attributes of liberals and conservatives, but what constitutes a moderate? Is a moderate someone who espouses, in relatively equal proportions, both liberal and conservative views, or is the term more indicative of a general attitude than a set of ideological principles? It just so happens that I know several people who call themselves moderates, and I wouldn't consider any of them to be evenly split ideologically. They are either mostly liberal or mostly conservative, so I can only...